Love of the Land - Beit Shean

Selections from classical Torah sources
which express the special relationship between
the People of Israel and Eretz Yisrael

BEIT SHEAN

"If the Garden of Eden is in Eretz Yisrael
then its gate is at Beit Shean."

This is the Talmudic tribute to the special sweetness
of the fruits of this area which lies about 120 meters below sea
level.

It was to the walls of Beit Shean that the Philistines
fastened the corpses of King Saul and his sons after vanquishing
the Israelite army. Saul once saved the honor of the men of
Yavesh Gilead, when the Ammonites had surrounded the city and
demanded the right to blind the right eye of every one of its
citizens as the price of peace. When the men of Yavesh Gilead
heard of this, they marched all night in order to remove the bodies
and bury them.

Modern Beit Shean was founded soon after the establishment
of the State of Israel near a small Arab town called Bissan, a
corruption of the city's Biblical name, and rapidly expanded to
become a major development town which absorbed many olim
from North Africa.